SWIM THROUGH THE VEIL

by H. G.

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory calls on the Israeli Government to urgently protect Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and ensure his safety, dignity, and physical integrity. The Israeli Government must immediately release Dr. Abu Safiya, or promptly charge him with a recognizable criminal offence and grant him a fair trial. In the meantime, he must be urgently transferred to a civilian hospital to ensure that he receives life-saving medical care. Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, has been held in Israeli custody since December 2024 under Israel’s Unlawful Combatant Law, without charge or trial. He was arrested at the hospital after refusing to evacuate while treating critical patients. According to his lawyers, Dr. Abu Safiya appears to be at imminent risk of death. Information available to UN Human Rights--OPT indicates he has been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement, repeated severe assaults resulting in grave injuries, and denial of medical care. —United Nations, July 9, 2026

Reoccurring
nightmares of my childhood
suddenly surprise my adult dreamscape

I'm drowning again
too deep underwater
sometimes
my ankle tied to a boat
other times
my car went over a bridge 

my chest and lungs
burn building
crescendo of terror
tension rising
behind my eyes
my head:
a pressure cooker

needing to whistle

I accept death
mouth and lungs
a vacuum 
sucking in
only to find

I can breathe underwater 

and I see
my Irish great (times two) grandparents
drowning
as the Staten Island Ferry sinks
with them on board

I feel the rage burning in her chest
the pressure of millions of colonized generations of the Irish

screaming in her head

freedom murdered
death in diaspora 

finally sucking water

into her lungs

and she swims through the veil

into my dreams

bloated

water laden corpses

newly lifeless buoys

bobbing

left behind 

and she breathes underwater with me

she whispers to me,

follow the call

follow our footsteps

to Staten Island

and Jersey City 

to our Palestinian brothers and sisters

and promise

not to leave them behind

even if we all drown

in the blue

of two colonizer flags

and so I wait

in my dreams

with my great (times two) grandmother 
and Refaat Alareer, Michael Collins, and Anne Frank

and the starved, shot, drowned, hanged, gassed, exiled, vaporized, reanimated (and reeliminated), dismembered masses

for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya

when he arrives

we swim through the veil

and try again

H.G. is an American poet based in New York. She holds an MA in history and is working on her first verse novel. Her previous poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Inflectionist Review, The Amphibian, Blue Minaret and is forthcoming in Neon & Smoke.

THE INJUSTICE THAT SCREAMS

by Chinedu lhekoronye 

They say we are free—

But chains still rattle in our dreams.

Not of iron, but of law,

Not of shackles, but of schemes.

The gavel strikes, but truth lies slain,

Beneath the cloak of legal pain.

The voices rise, the system scoffs,

While justice sleeps in ivory lofts.

They loot the land, then preach of peace,

While hunger roams and rights decrease.

They jail the bold, reward the sly,

And feed the poor another lie.

Who gave them crowns to crush the weak?

Who taught them power means not to speak?

Who drew the lines where blood must spill—

Then wrote the laws that bless the kill?

But we are fire, born from dust,

Rising now because we must.

Our words are swords, our truth is flame,

And we will set alight your shame.

For every child denied a voice,

For every vote turned into noise,

For every dream beneath your heel—

We stand. We shout. We will not kneel.

So let the tyrants learn at last:

A nation's silence cannot last.

The day will come, the truth will rise—

And justice will unblind her eyes.

Chinedu lhekoronye is a Nigerian, human rights lawyer, and poetic writer. He uses his writings to draw global attention to injustice in different places. He believes that injustice in one place is injustice globally.

THE DREAD

by William Aarnes

 after reading Stanley’s Kunitz’s translations of Anna Akhmatova

        for the contributors to The New Verse News

“He’s Threatened To Put Them In Jail”: Joe Biden Tells Katie Couric That Journalists Have Told Him Of Their Fears If Donald Trump Returns To White House —Deadline, February 22, 2024

Of course, they will jail

the journalists first

 

but the time will come

when you will pass your days

aware that the authorities

are letting you live

a circumscribed life,  

 

a couple of years

of the woman at the window  

of the apartment across the street

always fixing a stare

on you when you draw

your curtains open 

an intimidating reminder

that whatever you do

on your cell and laptop

is under surveillance,

your movements tracked,

 

a then two, three years in,

impossible to miss,

the agents in the parked car

always quick to get out

to openly follow you,

one just a few steps

above you on the escalator

and never standing more

than four people away

on a crowded subway,

you beginning to wish

you dared to confront them

with your puzzlement

about how much they are paid,

 

the time at last coming

when, one of your shadows

sipping coffee four tables away,

a dear friend will fail

to show for the lunch     

where you planned to lie

that you are too scared

to write any more poems,

not even in your head,

 

your friend not responding

to texts, you lingering

over your salad, dreading

the escorted ride home.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

CELLULITIS

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 260 poems published in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. 

UPON VOIDING PILLS

by Lavinia Kumar

 

Pill 1: Mifepristone

 

Man, White, Catholic, Texan

Prestigious Hell-Hound Cerberus 

Fortify ice flames of men

 

Goose-step with the always righteous

Trounce smugly all equal rights

Flush Pill #1 right down the toilet

 

Rule as arrogant white pious

Crush every woman’s uterus

Crucify all women’s freedoms

 

Pill 2: Misoprostol

 

Put pistols in every pocket

Abort no eggs. Abort all sense

Fortify that jail for women

 

Kneel together, quote the Bible

Love your neighbor only sometimes

Decree pregnant females un-people

 

Sling out lofty virile lassos 

Circle around a woman’s cervix

Lynch every woman’s freedom

Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists—very short prose of near 90 amazing women writers, poets, publishers, painters, artists, abolitionists, early suffragettes, and activists.

I WANT TO SEE IT

by Tricia Knoll

Trump fingerprinted. Putting his fat fingers

on the inky pad, rolling each one back 

and forth like criminals do. Dirty

hands. Who hands him something

to wipe the ink off? Does he bite at his

lip angry about he got here? Does he try 

to make a joke, pretend it’s an autograph

requested by some MAGA man

in a red hat? Talk about it going 

to his Library? 

 

Those secret service agents watching, 

what do they know of irony?

What vow have they made?

 

The bored jail officer has done this

a million times. Can that officer

categorize the look in the eye of this man? 

 

When it’s all done, is he obsessed

with the shadow of ink only he

can see? Wondering what smut 

clogs his crevices, the bacteria 

that linger. Does he ask his aide

for hand sanitizer as if to wipe

away the moment. 

 

Does anyone in the room dare

laugh?

 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. Her most recent collection is One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which shares poems about trees she has loved, planted or worries about in the time of climate change.

THE CAN'T-WORRY TALES (EPILOGUE)

by Richard Hacken

Whan that panne-demie with her virrus bittre

the lande with Mericanne courpses did littre,

and swathed thus visages with couvre-masque,

of which vertu for manye was too bigge an asque;

Whan Donaldus (eek!)  with his love for selfe

putte bleech and snaque's oil on ev'ry shelfe

for tendre eldres with prievyus conditiones

held oute to driy at cause of his foul perditiones;

and with electiones at halfe cours yronne,

twentie-milles of lyes he'd alreddie sponne, 

So priketh hem the truth from toe to tooth

which longeth folk to goon to voting booth,

or mail-personnes who neith in raine nor sleete do faile

to delivere ballotts by the U.S. Mail;

And specially from every stayte and districke

of Vespucci-Lande at the urn they pick

the hatefulle, hurtfulle jerke away to sende

that in an SDNY gaol he might justlie ende. 

Richard Hacken is a librarian-poet with degrees in German literature and past appointments at U.C. Davis, Oregon State, University of Kansas and BYU. He has translated Austrian short fiction and the poetry of a Tuvan poet from Mongolia who publishes in German. He claims to have found this Chaucer epilogue in the wash.

ZOOM COURT

by Thomas J. Erickson

It’s confounding having a hearing while I’m sitting
in my living room. I have a pandemic beard
and unruly bangs and am wearing boxer shorts
while I position the camera just so to catch
my face and my coat and tie.

Within reach are framed photographs,
books I have loved on the bookcase,
my poetry journals.

My client is on video from the jail. A young
black guy wearing a white mask that gleams
out of the grain. The symbolism is so heavy
it makes me want to reach for my pen.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His fourth book, The Lawyer Chronicles, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press this fall.

SOUND AND SILENCE

by Gil Hoy

He was unwantedly
   relentless

in his impetuous prolix
pronouncements

Could bend even
  the most patient

sturdy ear to
  the breaking point

with his crooked
                       rivers of words

Did he really
    tweet demanding

thanks from UCLA
         basketball players?

Did he really
   tweet an ungrateful

     father's son
should've been left

       in a Chinese jail?


I wish instead

that he'd strode
    confidently into a garden

                  of roses

Winked on top of a dry
         wry smile

Opened his mouth, and said

    nothing at all—like a stone—


While inquisitive listening flies gathered
      in his

suddenly silent mouth

   While fluttering flocking pigeons
flitted

   on suddenly scarecrow arms.

While squirrels around the man’s
      stone cold feet

squirreled away
  just enough acorns

for a suddenly warmer winter

   and the felicitous sun
         rose and set every day 

After day

After day

 After day.


And the man never spoke again.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who is studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy's work has appeared most recently in Ariel Chart, The Penmen Review, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, TheNewVerse.News and Clark Street Review. 

THE BRIDGE CLUB DISCUSSES THE ELECTION

by Susan McLean

Image source: Yahoo News Photo Illustration; Photo: AP/Getty)

“If he groped her, she’s a liar."
            "If he didn’t, she’s a frump.”
“If she blabs, he’ll call his lawyer.”
            “What a bozo!  One no trump.”

“Thinks he’s smart to pay no taxes:
            ‘If you pay them, you’re a chump.’”
“He’ll give safety nets the ax.” “As
            well as poor folks!”  “Three no trump.”

“He’ll wall off the southern border.”
            “And haul Muslims to the dump!”
“He’ll show blacks what law and order
            really stands for.”  “Four no trump.”

“He’ll throw Clinton in the slammer.”
            “Then he’ll lift us from our slump,
helped by Putin’s blade and hammer!”
            “What’s your bid now?”  “Six no trump.”

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University. Her books of poetry are The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife. She has also translated over 500 satirical poems of the Latin poet Martial, published as Selected Epigrams by the University of Wisconsin Press. Her light verse has often appeared in Light and Lighten Up Online.

A COMPASSIONATE JUDGE AT THE VETERANS COURT

by Phyllis Klein


   

   “It was more of a father-son conversation. It was personal.”

The Washington Post, April 22, 2016

And so, when the judge
gets into the cell
with the man he has just sentenced
to twenty-four hours in jail,
the man asks, “For the whole day?”
and the judge says,
“Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.”

Like a father who says,
“He’s my son and I won’t see him fall."
And a son who isn’t alone
locked down in the dark with his terror.

Because the judge has been to war, too,
and knows there are wounds
that aren’t visible. Because the man,
two decades in the military, knows
another soldier died for him in combat
and lives crushed under this,
and not only this.

And a judge can be a brother
to a man who has lost his way,
as two oak trees in a meadow
can be connected by their roots.
The way a man who has lost
his way can be a messenger
to remind us
there is so much more to know
about what’s on the inside.

Because we are so ready
to skate on the surface
of our minds. Because
we can do so much more
to be relatives in the fields        
of trees, beauty,
and devastation we call home.

Phyllis Klein believes in poetry. Her work has appeared in the Pharos of Alpha Omega Medical Society Journal,  Qarrtsiluni, Silver Birch Press, The Four Seasons Anthology, TheNewVerse.News, and is forthcoming in Crosswinds Poetry Journal and Chiron Review. She is very interested in the conversation between poets and readers of poetry. She sees artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area as a psychotherapist and poetry therapist.

NO AVAILABLE BEDS

by Alejandro Escudé

Young black man jailed since April for alleged $5 theft found dead in cell. Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, had been held in Virginia jail without bail for nearly four months, accused of stealing a Mountain Dew, Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake. —The Guardian, August 28, 2015

No bed for the sick young man
who stole a bottle of Mountain Dew,
a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake worth
a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven,

the young man found dead in
his jail cell, his emaciated body melting
like an ice sculpture on the floor.

One official said it was hard to tell
who was in charge of the young man,
losing muscle mass, deteriorating
like a city after a colossal hurricane.

It’s always hard to tell who’s in charge.
Blame is a language with its own structure,
Saussure’s signifier and signified.

I too, who also serve the masses,
might’ve refused the bed, let him die,
peering at the numbers crawling
over my screen like undeterrable ants.

In the cell, he had a mattress, a toilet,
a sink, a shelf and a slit-like window
from where he wore out his mind
rotating realities like a reversible coat.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

BELATED

by Megan Collins

I’ll admit I did it, too—loved a lion
I’d never heard of until he was dead.
Scrolling through photographs, I fell
for his amber eyes. I even noted how—
in some poses—he seemed as benign
as my golden retriever, asleep at my feet.
When I read of the arrow in this lion’s side,
the forty hours he suffered, I felt my throat
stiffen like cooling wax, felt my eyes
sting as if exposed to flame.

For days, I said his name—Cecil, Cecil—
but I had to Google the woman (Sandra!)
who died in a jail cell, who’d been dragged
from her car, pulled by her collar like a dog.
I loved her, then, too—how she fought
in ways I’ve never had to, how her smile
in photographs made me want to smile back.
Her laughter, I imagined, would sound like a song.

But—how easy it is to love a victim.
How easy to love what’s already gone.


Megan Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She teaches creative writing and literature in Connecticut, and is also an editor of 3Elements Review. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Compose, Linebreak, Rattle, Spillway, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. 

DEAD MAN WALKING

by Jeff Burt

Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

The last lynching
will not occur in redneck backwoods,
will not occur in buckthorn bramble swamp,
will not occur from revenge in the hood
under the laughter of protection
and the protection of laughter,
for this is the world we wanted
and this is the world we get:

the last man lynched
will be jailed by judiciousness,
condemned by the passport of poverty
to regions the rich will never tour,
hung by a jury,
stung, doped, chemically fried,
taken from circulation
like a ragged dollar bill.


Jeff Burt works in manufacturing.  He has work in Rhino, Windfall, Thrice Fiction, and forthcoming in Mobius, Storm Cellar, and Star 82 Review.

A MIGHTY WOMAN WITH A TORCH

by Donna Barkman

MADISON, WI (WKOW August 27, 2013) -- Capitol Police have been arresting the Solidarity Singers for gathering without a permit since late July.  But for the first time on Monday, those arrests turned violent.

Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota.

They forced me to my knees—the censors
and the haters of your speech, no longer free.
The cost of congregating: a strong fence
and the punishment for protest songs, a fee
or jail time— length to be decided.
My mouth is gagged, I gasp for breath
since they wrapped me, thickly iced,
strait-jacketed, to await my death.
But my tablet bears the law of freedom—
still!—and dated Independence Day,
so legislators are forewarned we’ll come
to march and sing, and have our say.
Imprisoned lightning – my torch – will thaw
our frozen rights:  reclaim our law!

          
Author's note: Text in italics from "The New Colossus" (1883) by Emma Lazarus, engraved on The Statue of Liberty.

Donna Barkman lived in Madison in the 70s and watched Miss Liberty on ice from her office window in Helen C. White Hall.  Since then, she continued as a librarian and added the job titles of performer, writer and teacher.